Are you a daddy’s girl?
According to a new Psychology Today blog post*, you can blame your genes.
The science behind it goes like this: As a woman, you get one X chromosome from your mother and another from your father. But you don’t relate to them the same way…
Why do I feel like xkcd has been reading my journal?
Author Mary Roach
I’m a serious body geek. I like all sorts of things that have to do with the human body.
A couple of summers ago, after taking a spring anatomy class at a nearby college, I volunteered to work in the cadaver lab for a couple of extra units. It was solitary work and since I really enjoy dissection, I was enthusiastic about my project.
My friends, however, weren’t as enthusiastic. I remember clearly a moment when we were all sitting around a fire pit in a friend’s yard. She lives on a beautiful country property, with a rolling lawn surrounded by tall trees.
There was lots of laughing and chattering going on. Probably a little wine going down, too.
Someone asked me what I was doing now that the semester had ended.
“I’m doing an extra project in the anatomy lab,” I said.
“What kind of project?” she asked.
You know how sometimes there’s a weird, spontaneous silence? Well, there was one just as I said:
“I’m harvesting femurs from cadavers and preparing them to be used as teaching specimens.”
The silence lingered.
No one said a word.
I was acutely aware of the crackling of the fire.
Then finally, someone said, “Wow. We had no idea.”
And, just like that, someone else changed the subject.
Later that evening, another woman leaned over to me and said, “You’ve got to read Stiff. I’ve only heard about it but I think you’ll love it.”
And that is how, as a reader, I met Mary Roach.
Stiff: The Secret Life of Cadavers was science writer Mary Roach’s first book. Since then, she’s written about what happens after death (Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife), and now sex. Her latest book is Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.
Recently, she shared “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Orgasm” in a TEDTalk.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out 25 years ago as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
Here are Mary Roach’s 18 minutes:
(Thanks to Boing Boing for the tip-off on this talk!)
This seems particularly funny to me today. Some kind soul Stumbled one of my stories, “By the Numbers,” and I ended up with tons of people visiting the blog this week. Judging by the comments, most of them were guys with geek creds. Then today, this on xkcd: a webcomic. Obviously, Fibonacci’s time has come.
New Scientist magazine is reporting that sperm should be subject to the same product liability laws as car brakes, according to a U.S. judge who has given a teenager with severe learning disabilities the go-ahead to sue the sperm bank that provided her with a biological father.
The 13-year-old girl was born with fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder causing mental impairment and carried on the X chromosome. She is now suing the sperm bank, Idant Laboratories of New York, under a product liability law more commonly associated with manufacturing defects, such as faulty car brakes.
The plaintiff does not have to show that Idant was negligent, only that the sperm it provided was unsafe and caused her injury. Genetic tests have revealed that she inherited the disorder from her biological father.
The girl was conceived in Pennsylvania, where a “blood shield law” protects sellers of human bodily material from product liability suits. In New York state, however, sellers are not protected by any such law. On March 31, a federal judge ruled the case should be tried in New York.
It made me wonder how far we are from being able to sue the actual human who produced the gamete. This may be just the tip of the flagellum.
Posted in Body, Parenting, Sci/Tech
Tagged fragile x syndrome, genetics, in vitro, new scientist, pregnancy, reproduction, science, sperm, sperm bank
… and then I promise I’ll cut this out until next year!
Last year in the New York Times blog, John Tierney wrote about International Pi Day. (Which is, by the way, originally an invention of The Exploratorium in San Francisco.) He said:
The Exploratorium has gathered a few genres on its Pi Day site, including this limerick:
If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
And the line’s length is d
The circumference will be
d times 3.14159
These are his suggestions for writing your own odes to Pi:
You can write a traditional haiku about pi like this one:
Unending digits . . .
Why not keep it simple, like
Twenty-two sevenths?Or, for the ambitious, you can try a pi-ku that’s both a haiku and a mnemonic device in which the number of characters in each word equals the value of the corresponding digit of pi. Here’s an example that enables you to derive 11 digits of pi (3.1415926535) by counting the number of characters in each of the 11 words:
Let C over D
(Wheel perimeter on height)
Equal its value.Then, for the real purist, there’s a new form of pi-ku proposed by Ian Chillag of NPR: Instead of the 5-7-5 syllable pattern of haiku, honor pi with lines of 3, 1 and 4 syllables. Like:
Why is pi
Square
As pie is round?
Here is my own attempt at pi-ku, being silly and trying to make it erotic, of course — like my haiku.
Reciting
Pi,
math gets me hot.
I’m quitting now. Really.
Posted in Sci/Tech, Uncategorized
Tagged exploratorium, fun, haiku, limericks, math, mathematics, pi, pi day, pi-ku, poetry, San Francisco, science
This year Pi Day sort of snuck up on me. I think that next year I’ll have to create a blog carnival or something. There’s just infinite potential!
I love this cartoon about Pi Approximation Day (July 22). 
Call me obsessed. I’ve always had a thing for certain numbers, especially what are called the “master numbers” in numerology. I love 11, 22, 33, and 44. My birthday is in master numbers (11/22) and I frequently see them on clocks. For example, I’ll wake up during the night and it will be 3:33, or I’ll check the time at work and it will be 11:22. This has driven some of the people in my life crazy (or at least they thought I was crazy), but other friends say they now see it too, and frequently report my emails arriving with the time 11:22 on them. One friend called last year on my birthday to say she had just bought lunch and the tab was $11.22 and she knew she should call me!
I thought we were on to a great thing when an ex-girlfriend and I had our first date on 9/9/2007, which, of course, is all nines (2007 adds up to nine), and nines have their own special kind of magic. For starters, if you add up the integers in any multiple of nine (what’s called the digital root), you’ll get nine. Try it with the date 9/9/2007, which is really 3×9 or 27, which is again, (2+7), 9. I love it! Here’s some more fun information on nine.
As for Pi. I think I’m a little obsessed. I’m using memorization as a daily meditation exercise, as part of my other yoga practices. I’m up to about 50 decimal points. Who knows where I’ll be next year at 3/14?
P.S. Here’s a link to one of my short stories about Pi.
P.P.S. I just discovered there’s a world ranking list for memorizing Pi. Chao Lu of China tops the list with a world record memorization of 67,890 digits. It took him 24 hours and 4 minutes to recite it! Hell, I’ll be happy if I can get to 100!
Posted in Humor, Sci/Tech, Uncategorized
Tagged dinosaurs, geek, geeky, math, mathematics, nerd, nerdy, numbers, numerology, pi, pi approximation day, pi day, science, success, world ranking
Today, 3/14, is International Pi Day and just to prove my geeky worthiness, I’ll write it as far as I can from memory: 3.1415926535897932384626433.
I think that’s correct, but I’m not usually in this good form. However, I helped my son study for a Pi reciting contest his school held yesterday and some of it seemed to stick!
Thanks to Boing Boing for this:
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If I was going to pick out a plushy to keep my big-brained and oh-so-sexy sweetheart warm in my absence, this would be the one. This fractal teddy bear is named Mandelbrot and was designed by the crafty blogger at Buttons for Mouse.
Those of you who didn’t read James Gleick‘s Chaos: Making a New Science, can bone up on Benoit Mandlebrot and his sets here.
M. Eric Carr at Northlight Computing made this short film Mandlebrot Zoom, featuring the song “Mandlebrot Sets” by Johnathan Coulton. You’ve got to love a song that contains the line “you’re one bad-assed fucking fractal”.
(Baby, I hope you’re out there listening tonight… I’m dedicating this one to you!)
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Posted in Sci/Tech, Uncategorized
Tagged crafts, geek, geeky, james gleick, johnathan Coulton, M. Eric Carr, mandlebrot, mandlebrot bear, mandlebrot sets, mandlebrot zoom, math, mathematics, nerdy, northlight computing, plushy, science, teddy bear
Following Lord David Tennant’s recent announcement that would be leaving the British science fiction show Dr. Who after five special episodes set to air over the next two years, a group of women scientists has requested that the next Dr. Who be a woman.
Speculation over who will be Tennant’s successor has been rampant and now a group working to improve the numbers, and status, of women working in the science and technology fields have launched a campaign to make the next Doctor female.
A spokeswoman from the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC) said: “There is a distinct lack of role models of female scientists in the media and recent research shows that this contributes to the under-representation of women in the field.
“The UKRC believes that making a high profile sci-fi character with a following like Doctor Who female would help to raise the profile of women in science and bring the issue of the important contribution women can and should make to science in the public domain.”
Like any good, modern campaign, this one is up and running on Facebook.
You can read more here, in The Telegraph.
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Tagged Dr. Who, engineering, Lord David Tennant, science, technology
Australian researchers claim to have found a genetic link that predisposes individuals to male-to-female transsexualiam.
Personally, I hope we don’t spend so much time studying the possibility and probability of everone’s individual quirks to the extent that we take all the fun out of it. After all, that’s what a lifetime’s for, right? I don’t want to be trapped on a tour bus with everyone around me on a pre-scheduled ticket. I want surprises!
Nevertheless, here’s the story, courtesy of the BBC.
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I always wonder what percentage of long-term lesbian relationships start out over a cup of tea (or coffee, chai, or cocoa). Even relationships that start in cyberspace seem to eventually end up in a coffeehouse.
Finally, researchers have found a link between physical and emotional warmth. It seems those warm cups we’re clutching, while we gaze at each other through the steam, may actually be perpetuating the infamous lesbian U-haul syndrome.
This is because we actually feel cozier toward each other, more quickly, with something warm in our hands.
Maybe those serial monogamists who rush into relationships over and over again should be required to limit their first three dates to slushies and smoothies, just to give everyone time for thoughtful consideration. (Note: Margaritas and daiquiris defeat this purpose!)
Read the story in the Los Angeles Times.
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged relationships, research, science, serial monogamists, slushies, smoothies, u-haul syndrome, warmth
Ever since I crunched my first wintergreen Lifesaver in a dark bathroom, and watched in the mirror as sparks flashed between my teeth, I’ve been fascinated with the natural phenomenon known as triboluminescence.
In short, triboluminescence is name for the light that is result of energy being released when bonds are broken in crystalline material.
Now researchers at UCLA have found that the triboluminescence in Scotch tape can be used to create x-rays. Read the fascinating story in the Los Angeles Times.
BTW, the reason this phenomenon is so obvious with wintergreen Lifesavers, is because wintergreen oil, used as the flavoring agent and known by the chemical name methyl salicylate, is florescent, so it amplifies the visibility of the sparks.
See Lifesavers triboluminescence for yourself in the video below.
(Hint: don’t blink!)
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Posted in Etcetera, News Items
Tagged lifesavers, Los Angeles Times, office supplies, science, tape, triboluminescence, wintergreen, x-rays
If you’re as fascinated with the intricacies of the human body as I am, you might find this video fascinating.
Suffering from a tremor in his right hand, banjo player Eddie Adcock underwent brain surgery. Surgeons placed deep brain stimulating electrodes in his brain in an attempt to control the tremor.
Because surgeons need to be able to see the effects of brain stimulation, patients are kept awake – with anesthesia for pain control – during this type of surgery.
In this case, Adcock played the banjo. You can read more on the website he keeps with his wife Martha.
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I’ve always wondered how I managed to score equally well in the math and English portions of my SATs all those years ago. The question has haunted me, popping into my head now and then. Considering my poor math record in high school, it always seemed… well… improbable that I would score even moderately in math, let alone well.
We think of mathematics as only a learned skill, but new research is showing that some kinds of math may be instinctive. You can read about “approximate number sense” here in the NY Times. On the NYT page, there’s also a fun test you can take, measuring your ability to quickly approximate numbers. The test information says that the average score for adults, in estimating 30 sets, is 75% accuracy. I took the test today, and in 40 sets I was 90% accurate.
So I think I finally have the answer to my SAT mystery: My approximate math skills are good, even if my learned math skills are lacking. Maybe this is why my friends are always asking me to calculate the tip!
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Scientists are dissecting us – as a species – slowly, bit by bit. One group of experts worries about the long-term implications of what we eat. Another worries about how we sit, for how long we sit, and what we do when we’re not sitting.
(I like to read health and science stories in the news, but everything changes so quicky and there’s just so much to… well, digest… that I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be eating eggs, or how many per day or per week.)
However, there’s another group out there researching something much more elusive, one of the fundamental states that governs our lives: happiness. An article in The Los Angeles Times examines the science of happiness.
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